By Charity Montieth/managing editor

I once was a great speller, but that was before the days of those handy little features we know and love—spell check and auto-correct.

Yep, I was what you would call a “word nerd,” your go-to girl for an accurrate spelling of almost any word.

Those Friday morning spelling tests were a breeze, and I always particpated in the school spelling bee.

I was a walking dictionary, a lexicon virtuoso. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exageration.

But now, thanks to the convineince of technology, even I have goten lazy.

Who needs a dictionary? Why look it up?

All you need nowadays is a spelling that somewhat resembles the desired word. If the computer doesn’t majically correct it for you, a quick press of F7 surely will.

This makes me wonder, if I just desided not to use spell check, would anyone even notice? (Sorry, English teachers, you don’t get to play this little game.)

Poor spelling is all around us, and if you truly don’t know how to spell a word that’s one thing.
What bugs me are the lazy people who don’t bother to look things up. But even worse is when it’s intentional.

Chik-Fil-A has hit the advertizing jackpot with those poor, uneducated cows.

and we’re always in such a hurry that our e-mails are atrocious and the worst ofenders dont even attemt to use proper punctuation anymore

Where is this trend leading us?

The English language has evolved significantly from the days of Shakespeare’s use of thee and thou, so its only natrual that our language contineus to do so. But from the looks of things, I don’t like the direction our language seems to be heading.

It almost makes me wonder what dictionarys will look like in the next 50 years. Or better yet, will there even be dictionarys?

I’m tempted to go around with a giant red marker to correct all of those blatant errors that just scream at me, but who has time for that?

Maybe a better solution would be for us to all excersize our brains and go back over all of those rules we learnt in second grade.

You know, the rules like I before E except after C.

And for the record, there are 16 misspelled words and three punctuation errors in this column. Yes, they were intentional.

Did you find them all?